This wasn’t as much about past performance as future intentions. This wasn’t at all about missing the playoffs this year but rather the possibility of …
This wasn’t as much about past performance as future intentions. This wasn’t at all about missing the playoffs this year but rather the possibility of missing them again next year and maybe the year after that while following a long and winding rebuild road. Information is at a premium when it concerns the thought process of one individual, in this case Garden and Rangers CEO Jim Dolan, who until his moment had resisted anything like this intervention on the hockey side of the business. In that sense, this is shocking. But sources indicate that Dolan’s vision of the future, and more specifically the immediate future, clashed with the blueprint embraced by now-former team president John Davidson and now-former general manager Jeff Gorton, both dismissed on Wednesday. Three years after The Letter and only two years after luring Davidson from Columbus to oversee the program, philosophies diverged. Davidson, who had overseen bottom-up rebuilds in St. Louis and Columbus that failed to reach fruition under his tenure, had continued to preach patience under a slow-walk philosophy. Gorton presumably was not only JD’s acolyte, but a true believer. According to one source, Davidson was asked to fire Gorton but refused. We’re told that after four years out of the playoffs, Dolan had begun to question the administration of the program whose long view does not exactly jibe with the roster whose marquee players Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, will be between 28 and 30 when next season commences and are likely to be diminished by the time the promise coalesces. Since the adoption of the hard cap, there have been 20 instances in which teams missed the playoffs at least four consecutive seasons.
